Have you ever thought about how arrogant we humans are?
We learn a little bit and we think we can control everything. We make things bigger and faster and more complicated but we still think we have it all under control. We have the greatest minds and technology, why not?
Think about these things:
Food - We think we can decompose food into its component bits to explain what you need to eat and then fortify food. It doesn’t work. We have the weirdest ailments in history because of this process – how the hell can you be obese and malnourished at the same time. Well, science figured how to make fat malnourished people.
Markets/ finance – Rules and regulations work as well as letting these egos run wild with other people’s money. Now some people think they can control the melt down of the finance industry again. The complexity and the inter-connectiveness of the markets guarantee another catastrophic event. Maybe it will not be derivatives and credit default swaps but it will be something else.
Nature – We build dams and levies thinking we can control the water and weather. We spend billions on a city that mother nature will wash away again. Can we really control the weather?
Global warming – The G8 thinks it is going to stop global warming. What makes us so arrogant to think that we can actually control the weather patterns in the world – and that governments nonetheless are going to agree on something useful?
We cannot control everything. It may be interesting to try but we should not delude ourselves. We should prepare ourselves, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually and materially to deal with catastrophic events. However, controlling these things is like trying to predict the day of an earthquake and trying to tie the earth’s plates together so they do not move. Although we spend time trying to figure out earthquakes we also spend time making plans and doing prevention in case of an earthquake.
So do you believe people can control all things? Is all we need a bit more insight and knowledge and we can solve the problems? Or should we respect nature a little more and plan and prevent as we do with earthquakes?
